3. Wednesday
CHAPTER 3
WEDNESDAY
W hen Maggie woke the next morning in complete darkness, it took her a moment to remember why she was sinking between the pillows on a lumpy couch. And, you know, what country she was in. Her aunt had died so suddenly that when Maggie had arrived, the cottage had felt a little like Pompeii, with everything abruptly frozen in time. She’d brushed it off at first, dropped her bags and headed back out to focus on the bustle of the morning. But after Daniel Becker had gone, Maggie was left alone at the cottage with several hours until she could reasonably go to sleep and no more meetings to distract her. She was exhausted, and yet, she’d found she couldn’t sit still.
Stillness felt wrong, somehow, in that space. She’d visited the cottage so often during her childhood summers, her one special privilege as the niece of the Camp Director, and the little house had always felt so full of life. Her aunt was supposed to be pouring two glasses of sweet tea and rummaging around until she found a deck of cards or the banged-up Yahtzee set or falling off the couch trying to demonstrate the proper form for a stride jump because Maggie had failed her lifeguard test. But she wasn’t. And in her place was this heavy quiet.
Maggie didn’t know what to do. So she set to tidying up.
It felt almost wrong, which, of course, was nonsense. She couldn’t exactly leave it the way it was. She had to live there for the summer, and there were still dirty dishes in the sink. And it wasn’t just the regular clutter of daily life that needed dealing with. Peggy Sullivan had always been in long-term preparations for a starring turn on Hoarders. Almost every flat surface (other than the couch, which apparently belonged to the dog) was covered in knickknacks and paperwork and photographs and postcards.
So, Maggie had spent the rest of the evening cleaning. She tossed the paper from June 6th, still on the kitchen table, in the recycling, and then took the recycling all the way down to the Main Lodge. She did the dishes and put them away, washed the laundry that was still in the hamper and put that away, too, as best she could. She swept and mopped and vacuumed. She stripped the bed, washed the sheets, and remade it. But when her alarm went off at 8:30, she’d been too sweaty and exhausted to talk sense into herself and crashed on the couch anyway. It was only when her stomach grumbled at her that she realized she hadn’t eaten since breakfast, but by then she was mostly asleep.
At whatever still-pitch-black-out hour this was, however, she was wide awake. Maggie reached under the roughly textured throw pillow that was definitely leaving an irritated criss-cross pattern on her cheek and pulled out her phone to check the time. 4:21am. So much for the heavy dose of melatonin she’d taken the night before. She should have brought out the Zzzquil.
It was going to be a long day.
Maggie sat up, swung her legs off the couch, and felt something warm and furry at her feet. She yelped and pulled her knees up to her chest before remembering that she had a dog now.
Oh she definitely hadn’t fed the dog. Shit.
She looked down and saw one black eye reflecting the moonlight glowing through the room’s threadbare decorative curtains. The dog huffed out an extremely put-upon…something. Was it a sigh? Did dogs sigh? This one seemed to.
“I’m not too thrilled about being awake either, buddy,” Maggie said, before realizing that she was talking—out loud—to a dog. She usually coped better than this with jet lag. She needed coffee.
Carefully stepping over Parton this time, Maggie picked her way through the shadows to the kitchen. It was exactly as she remembered from her childhood summers: pale wood cabinets and countertops, faded but cheerful floral curtains in deep greens and pinks, and white appliances “updated” sometime in the early 90s. The small breakfast table was covered with a blue gingham oilcloth. Eclectic but approachable. Just like Aunt Peg.
Maggie hadn’t poked around the kitchen beyond stacking the newly-washed dishes on the open shelving with the others, but there was a would-we-call-it-vintage Mr. Coffee on the counter, which meant there must, somewhere, be coffee. Please, god. When she was beginning to fear for the worst, she found a bag of light roast grounds and some filters in the pantry on the far wall.
Once that was brewing, Maggie went to check the fridge for milk. There was a carton on the door, already opened. She checked the date, then checked her phone, because what was today’s date? It was good for another week. She sniffed at the contents. They seemed fine. Still, she was beginning to have that eerie Pompeii feeling again. Her aunt had bought this milk planning to drink it herself. But she was gone, and the milk was still here. And it was fine. Maggie was being silly. There was no point in letting perfectly good milk go to waste.
Still, on second thought, maybe just black coffee today.
The dog seemed to perk up at the sound of the coffeemaker, and by the time Maggie had finished her first cup, it had wandered over and was sitting expectantly next to where she leaned against the counter, intermittently making some sort of growly grumbly sound. That Pavlov, he might have been on to something.
“Ok, ok.” Maggie mustered the energy required to make her way over to the cabinet where she’d seen an enormous bag of kibble. Only after she’d scooped up a heaping mound of unidentifiable red and brown crunchy bits into the dog bowl she’d found tucked into the kibble bag did it occur to her that she wasn’t at all sure how much food she was supposed to give the dog. Or how often she was supposed to feed it, for that matter. Did dogs even eat breakfast? Could the dog just sense that she was an easy mark?
Well, today was a freebie. She set the bowl down on the linoleum tile.
With the dog happily crunching away, Maggie picked up her phone and Googled “how to feed a dog.” She read over several charts cross-referencing a dog’s age and weight and estimating the necessary caloric intake. They were all more or less the same. So. Easy enough. She didn’t know how old the dog was, but it wasn’t a puppy, and it didn’t seem that old, so she figured she wanted to be in the column for “adults.” Excellent. But how was she supposed to know how much the dog weighed? She didn’t think her aunt seemed like the type to keep a scale around, but even if she had, Maggie couldn’t quite imagine getting the dog to stand still with all four of its paws squarely on a bathroom scale while she crouched next to it trying to read the display. She supposed she could just try to pick it up and guess, but since she wasn’t in the habit of lifting heavy objects of known weights with any regularity, she didn’t really have a frame of reference.
There was, of course, one obvious solution, but she really, really did not want to ask Daniel Becker how much she was supposed to feed this dog.
Just then, her phone lit up with a call from her mother. It was almost enough to make Maggie regret successfully hacking into her aunt’s wi-fi (on the third try, which she had been pretty proud of).
Maggie’s mother, a professor and a doctor at UNC Medical Center, was, as her father often said with great fondness, a force of nature. Maggie had never asked him to specify which force in particular, but she had privately taken to calling her Hurricane Kathleen sometime in middle school. Maggie loved her mother, she just appreciated her much more from several thousand miles away. Which was exactly where she had gone after graduating from UNC with a business degree a decade earlier.
Maggie braced herself and answered the phone.
“Mom, it’s 5 a.m.”
“It’s 5:36, and you’re on European time. Good morning, dear!”
“Morning.”
“I just wanted to check in and see how it’s going. Are you settling in?”
“I only got here yesterday.”
“Of course, dear. Have you seen Lucille? How is she?” Miss Lucille had been her aunt’s longtime partner, though she lived in a studio apartment in Asheville. (The apartment was both small and literally a studio. She taught weaving at Blue Harbor over the summer, but that was more as a favor to Aunt Peg than as a source of income. Miss Lucille was, apparently, a rather famous textile artist.)
“I haven’t seen her. I just got here yesterday.” Maggie was, to be honest, looking forward to and dreading seeing Miss Lucille in equal measure.
“We did pass along your condolences, of course, but do go visit soon. I feel so awful that we couldn’t stay longer after the funeral, what with everything, and you know how she is. No muss, no fuss, just ‘please Kathleen go home and for the love of god do not send me a casserole.’”
“I don’t think casserole does well in the mail, anyway.”
“No, probably not, but there wasn’t time to make one before we drove down. Anyway, I’ve got to get going, this paper stubbornly refuses to write itself, and your father has finally hired an attorney to help with the estate?—”
“Mom, it’s been like a week.”
“I know. No sense of urgency, your father. Anyway, she walked us through the North Carolina Intestate Succession Act for approximately two hours before informing us that, as we expected, it is very likely that Blue Harbor will pass to me, but that it may take a year to settle. So keep that in mind as you’re looking for buyers, dear. It may only take six months, since Peggy wasn’t married and had no children, and Lucille wants nothing to do with it. Though, of course, I will insist on splitting any proceeds from the sale. Not that there are likely to be any proceeds. Anyway, the point is, thank you again, dear, for stepping in. Let me know if there’s anything else your father or I can do. And please pick the weekend you’d like us to come visit, or we’ll just come barging down whenever is convenient. We have to take advantage of your being in the same country.”
Maggie was about to take advantage of her mother’s brief pause for breath to promise that she would let her know if she needed anything when her eyes landed on the dog.
“Actually…you and dad don’t…want a dog, do you? Aunt Peg’s dog, Parton?”
She was obviously imagining it, but the dog looked up at the sound of its name and she thought for a moment that it looked…offended.
“Margaret Elizabeth Sullivan McArthur what about me as a person or any part of your childhood has led you to believe that I would want a dog?”
“Literally nothing.”
“That’s correct.”
“Alright. Do you know how much I’m supposed to feed it?”
“I assume you tried Google?”
“Google wants to know how much the dog weighs.”
“I see. We’ve really become too reliant on the internet. Perhaps try the old-fashioned method. You could ask your brother.”
“Why—”
“He has a dog.”
“Right. Yes. He has a dog.” It was tiny and fluffy, but a dog was a dog. Probably. “That’s a good lead, th?—.”
“You’re welcome, M&M. All our love. Talk soon!”
And, with an almost audible whoosh, Hurricane Kathleen was gone.
“Thanks,” Maggie said to the empty room.
The dog, having licked the bowl spotless, padded over to the couch, climbed up, and curled itself into an implausibly small black donut, apparently satisfied that it wasn’t being immediately evicted.
“Hey, how much do you weigh?” Maggie called after it. She hadn’t been expecting a response, of course, and she didn’t get one. Unless the dog’s heavy sigh was directed at her. Which it obviously was not.
The warm light leaking through the curtains meant the sun had begun to rise, so her little brother probably wouldn’t be awake for another five or six hours, but she pulled up his contact, typed out a message, and sent it off anyway.
Any chance I can interest you in getting a canine companion for your canine companion?
He could respond later. Between the time difference from Charlotte to Europe and her schedule, their text conversations usually proceeded at the pace of an email exchange anyway. She rubbed at her lower back, then stretched her arms up over her head and groaned, releasing some of the tension in her shoulders with a series of satisfying cracks. Definitely no more pointlessly sleeping on the couch.
“Ok,” she said, punctuating the sentiment by plunking her phone on the kitchen table as she brought her arms down. She needed to get moving. Maybe go for a run. But before she could talk herself into digging a pair of shorts out of her suitcase, her phone buzzed. And kept buzzing. Not a text, then. Who else could possibly be calling her?
A photo glowed on her phone screen: Maggie, in her college graduation regalia, being lifted clear off the ground by a bear hug from her brother, who was wearing a long smoking jacket to celebrate the occasion. She swiped to answer.
“Teddy?”
“Hey M&M. Sorry, saw you texted. I’m driving. And you’re in the continental United States now, so I figured I’d just try you.”
“You’re…It’s like six a.m.” She had been transformed into a clock overnight, apparently.
“Yeah, but you’re up. You texted.”
“I know I’m up. Why are you up?”
“It’s Wednesday. I haven’t had any luck with the scratch-offs, so I’m going to work.”
“Work.”
“You know I have a job, right?”
“Obviously.” She did know he had a job, of course she did. She just forgot sometimes. Adults had jobs and Teddy was…Teddy. He was five years younger than her, which meant he’d been sixteen when she’d moved to London. Intellectually, she was aware of the passage of time, but he was still a little bit frozen there for her. Class clown. Sliding by on charm.
“What is it?” He asked with dangerous innocence.
“What?”
“What’s my job?”
She paused for too long. “Construction…something.”
“Mmm…Judges, will you allow ‘construction something’?” He paused, as if waiting for a panel deliberation.
Maggie stepped on his dramatic flourish. “What’s my job?”
“Aaaand that is an unexpected thumbs up from the judges. They will allow ‘construction something’ for the win. Congratulations, Ms. McArthur!”
“That’s what I thought,” Maggie said. No one ever knew what a “consultant” was unless they were one.
“Yes, yes. Your job is an unfathomable enigma. Capitalism salutes you.”
“Thank you.”
“There’s no traffic, so I have about four minutes before I get my driving contraption to the big empty place to do some construction something-ing. What can I do you for?”
“So, apparently Aunt Peg had a dog.”
“My man Parton!”
“You’re acquainted?” It hadn’t occurred to her that Teddy had ever been up to visit Aunt Peg at Blue Harbor. She only ever saw her aunt when they were all in Chapel Hill for Christmas, on the years that she made it back across the Atlantic. But why wouldn’t he have? Everyone else was going about their own lives as she was going about hers.
“We’re old buds.”
“Any chance you want to adopt it?”
“Him.”
“What?”
“Him. Parton's pronouns are he/him,” Teddy said firmly. “Until he tells us otherwise.”
“Ok, any chance you want to adopt him ?”
“No.”
“Teddy! Why not?”
“Aside from the fact that I already have The Incredible Hulk, who very much prefers to be the lady of the manor, Parton is like the mayor of Blue Harbor. You can’t send him away. The people will revolt.”
“I didn’t realize he was democratically elected.”
“Well, now you know.”
Maggie sighed and flopped down on the couch next to the public servant in question.
“Fine. Can you please tell me how much I’m supposed to feed it then?” When Teddy didn’t respond, she corrected herself. “Him, sorry.”
“Doesn’t it say on the bag?”
“No. There is a chart on the bag. And there are charts on the internet. And all the charts require that I know how much it—he—weighs. How am I supposed to know how much he weighs, Teddy?”
“Can’t you just…guesstimate? By looking at him?”
“Guesstimate?”
“Yeah, how much do you think he weighs? You can ballpark it.”
Maggie could hear his turn signal clicking in the background. “I don’t know. Fifty pounds?”
“Fifty pounds? Margaret. Jesus. Is this a metric system thing? Do you need to guess in stones and do a conversion?”
“What?” she asked, surprisingly defensive and loud enough that Parton opened an eye to glare at her. “He’s big!”
“I know he’s big! Like a hundred pounds, big!”
“A hundred pounds!” Maggie whisper screamed.
“He’s a gentle giant, our Doggy Parton.”
“I’m probably not overfeeding him, then.”
“Unlikely.”
“And, uh, when am I supposed to feed him?”
“Morning and evening, probably. Split the amount of food in half.”
“He doesn’t, like, eat lunch?”
“No time. He’s got to be out pressing the flesh. Kissing babies.” Teddy’s voice was crisper, like she’d been taken off speakerphone. She heard a door slam in the background.
“Of course.”
“And just leave a bowl of water out for him.”
“Right. Water.” Fuck. She had been systematically dehydrating the dog. Actually, she should probably drink something that wasn’t coffee herself.
“And with that, I have arrived. Off to go hammer some concrete. Nail down some girders. The usual.”
Maggie rolled her eyes. “Thanks, Teddy Bear.”
“Any time M&M. Glad you’re back in the good old U S of A. Tell Parton I say —” He made a loud yapping sound and hung up.
Maggie looked down at the dog and patted his head tentatively. “Teddy says hi.”
Maggie did manage to go for a quick five mile run before the first of the counselors arrived. Not wanting to get lost on the back forty trails on her second day, she’d stuck to the side of the main highway. Between the jet lag and the altitude, she was breathing hard by the time she looped back and could see the cottage at the top of its little hill in the distance. She gave in to the heaviness in her legs and slowed to a walk, letting her muscles cool down.
Parton was waiting for her on the porch when she arrived. Or, he was on the porch, sprawled out. He probably hadn’t been waiting so much as sleeping in a new location. Maggie had tried to get him to join her on the run. That was a thing dogs did, right? She’d jogged little circles around the living room trying to communicate the idea of running, but the only response she’d elicited was a raised head, which he tilted slightly to the left before lowering it back onto his front paws with a snuffle.
Maggie showered, opting to use her travel toiletries rather than her aunt’s Dr. Bronner’s, and dug through her suitcase for something that said I Am Definitely Qualified To Oversee An Extensive Array of Dangerous Outdoor Activities for Children. Unfortunately, because she was not, in fact, particularly qualified, all her outdoorsy clothing had been purchased during a whirlwind shopping spree at A. S. Adventure the day before she’d flown out of Brussels. The puffer vest was sparkling, the hiking boots were spotless, and, even when she took the tags off, no one was going to believe that moisture-wicking top had been on so much as a brisk uphill walk. She was going to look like Summer Camp Barbie’s quirky red-headed sidekick, fresh out of the box.
Maggie compromised, throwing a worn t-shirt from a 10k in Berlin over a new pair of quick-dry shorts and the too-clean hiking boots, which, yikes, really needed some breaking in. By 9 a.m. she was down in the dining hall, armed with a smile, what she hoped was an air of competence, and the staff list that Nurse April had forwarded. (Aunt Peg had hidden her own copy very effectively.)
Welcome, counselors!
* * *
“This is the best thing that has ever happened to me,” Daniel said, as he and Drew inched closer to the service window of The Chuck Wagon.
“It didn’t happen to you. It happened to me.” She adjusted her mess of a top knot for what must have been the fifteenth time since she’d arrived.
Drew was almost unflappable. A former competitive kayaker, she was strong and lithe, with sandy blonde hair that was always at least a little messy and a deep tan earned over thousands of hours on North Carolina’s rivers. The hair tic was her only tell. Daniel had clocked it a few weeks into their freshman year at UNC Asheville, after they had done some serious bonding over their shared, and apparently very uncool, enthusiasm for the upcoming release of the movie version of the Twilight books. (Yes, because of Kristen Stewart. Yes, they attended a midnight showing.)
The hair tic meant that the unflappable Drew was actually embarrassed. Daniel was savoring it. “Yeah. It happened to you. And now what’s happening to me is that you are explaining how a woman unceremoniously abandoned a hookup she initiated in favor of a strict 8 p.m. bedtime. I mean. Wow. Never thought I’d see the day.”
“That’s enough.”
“Andrea ‘Drew’ Casanova Davies. In memoriam.”
“Shut up.”
“Can you go back to the part where her phone buzzed, and you told her to send it to voicemail, but she didn’t?”
“It was an alarm.” Drew pulled her hair elastic all the way off and began to fingercomb through her tangled waves.
“That’s not better.”
“Why did I tell you about this, again?”
“Because I am the closest thing you have to a brother except for your actual brother, who we hate, and you knew it would bring me joy in my hour of darkness.”
Drew twisted her hair into a single rope and began piling it back on top of her head. “Speaking of not my family, how’s Lynn?”
“She’s good. You know, pilates, pickle ball, dismantling the white capitalist hetero-patriarchy one case at a time.” Daniel’s mom was a career public defender who’d raised Daniel as a single parent. She had stood in for Drew’s parents during the Freshman year Family Weekend that they hadn’t bothered to attend (though, in fairness, Drew hadn’t bothered to invite them), and they’d taken to one another instantly.
“That’s my girl. I’ve got to give her a call.”
“Chuck!” Daniel called out a greeting as the customers in front of them stepped aside.
“Daniel! Drew!” Chuck yelled with the enthusiasm of a man spotting the true love he’d believed to have been lost at sea, despite the fact that Daniel and Drew ate at the Wagon at least once a week. He reeled off their order to his swoopy-haired blonde husband, Jake, who was manning the grill. “One Carolina Barbecue Grilled Cheese on white. One Carolina Barbecue Grilled Cheese on white, no barbecue, side of sauce, extra pickles, extra onions.”
“Hey man, shouldn’t you be up at Blue Harbor?” Daniel asked.
“I tried to tell him that,” Jake called over his shoulder.
“It’s sandwich bar all day, so I come here for last hurrah of summer.”
“He’s checking to make sure I haven’t burned The Wagon down,” Jake said, pressing a thick piece of buttered bread to the griddle.
“I come because I missed you,” Chuck yelled back.
Jake let out a theatrical sigh.
“I am hard to be mad at.” Chuck smirked at Daniel and Drew. “It annoys him.”
It was Daniel’s turn to buy lunch, so he paid, and they stepped aside to wait for their meals.
“God they are lucky they’re so fucking adorable,” Drew grumbled good-naturedly.
Through the Wagon’s open back door, Daniel caught Jake sneak a probably not-up-to-code kiss as he handed Chuck a freshly stacked sandwich in a paper tray.
Then Drew elbowed Daniel so abruptly in the ribs that he jumped.
“Ouch?” He complained, rubbing at his side.
“Come out tonight. Be my wingman,” she said.
“Since when do you need a wingman?” Daniel moved to stand against a nearby oak, taking himself out of range of Drew’s elbows.
“You’re right.” She followed, laying a hand on the bark to lean next to him with an aloof appeal that Daniel knew brought women to their knees. “No one would believe that. How about: Please come out tonight Daniel, because this sad boy routine has gone on long enough, and, frankly, I am worried that if you don’t get laid soon I am going to have to explain how sex works, and once was enough for that conversation.”
“Thanks again for that, though. The American sex education system is trash.”
“You’re welcome.” She shifted to lean her back against the tree next to Daniel and bumped her hip to his. “Don’t change the subject. I can’t handle any more of your wistfulness. It’s been months. You didn’t even like her that much. That is literally why she broke up with you.”
“I liked her plenty.”
“Wow. Have you considered moonlighting for Hallmark?”
“They actually wanted me full time. I had to break it to them that I like my current gig.” Daniel turned to face Drew. “And, technically, she broke up with me because we didn’t argue enough, which I still think makes no sense.”
“Did you at least argue against breaking up?”
“No…”
“Which brings me back to my original point: Get over it.”
“Ok, ok I’m over it.” Daniel slumped back against the tree. “But I’m still not coming out with you. I don’t want to yell over loud music at strangers. I just want to bring someone takeout after a long day and watch a deranged Halloween-candy-themed episode of Chopped.”
“Becker, it never ceases to amaze me that I’m the lesbian in this friendship.”
Daniel was saved from responding by Chuck shouting their number loudly enough to be heard across state lines. They snaked their way back to the service window around the rest of the growing lunch crowd. Chuck was setting down two red and white checkered paper trays, each almost buckling under the weight of an enormous sandwich.
“One Carolina Barbecue Grilled Cheese on white. One Carolina Barbecue Grilled Cheese on white, no barbecue, side of sauce, extra pickles, extra onions.”
Drew had once suggested that Chuck put her usual grilled cheese order on the menu because she felt ridiculous asking for a barbecue sandwich hold the barbecue. Chuck had told her, in a tone that brooked no argument, that grilled cheese was “not Chuck.” It was the most offended Daniel and Drew had ever seen him. They had later debated whether Chuck meant that grilled cheese was insufficiently authentic chuckwagon fare (neither, for that matter, was barbecue, but in North Carolina no one would question barbecue finger sandwiches for high tea) or whether he meant that it was not “on brand” for “Chuck.” They decided the confusion was part of the mystique.
“Thanks man,” Drew said, reaching for the nearer of the two sandwiches and passing it to Daniel. Before she could grab the second, Chuck tugged it out of reach.
“You are vegetarian?”
“Uh, yeah.”
“The Chuck Wagon needs vegan option. Chuck will be on reality television show. The Large Food Truck Race.”
“Hey, congra?—!”
He raised his palm to silence Daniel, but then, in a nod to politeness, added “Spasibo.” Returning his attention to Drew, he continued. “Producers require vegan option. They said grilled cheese is not vegan.”
“Not if you make it with real cheese,” Drew said.
Chuck grimaced. “You will help.”
Daniel couldn’t honestly tell whether that had been a question or a directive. Chuck had a way of voluntelling with such enthusiasm that you only realized days later that you hadn’t initially offered to assist.
“Sure,” Drew said, “I don’t know?—”
“I will be testing recipes on Fourth of July. Come to the Blue Harbor cookout.”
“Ok, yeah. I’ll be there.”
“Bring the meat eating one,” Chuck commanded, nodding at Daniel, who at that moment had a mouthful of Carolina barbecue.
“We’ll be there.”
With a grunt, Chuck released the hostage porkless pork sandwich and turned to the next customer in line.
“Sounds like we’ve got a hot date for the Fourth,” Drew said, jaywalking to an open picnic table at the small park across the two-lane highway.
“If Chuck makes vegan wings, he can be your wingman.”
Drew shot him a look over her shoulder. “You’re going to die alone. Come out tonight.”
“I can’t. Camp is open.”
Drew set her sandwich down on a semi-clean looking cement slab table and dropped onto the matching bench.
“I, too, am gainfully employed and yet here I am, going out tonight.”
Daniel brushed some crumbs off the tabletop and wiped at the bench before sitting across from her.
“Yeah, but only one of us has a job that starts before 4 p.m. and he’s not going to show up to counselor training with a hangover.”
“We’ll hydrate.”
“ You’ll hydrate. I’m not coming.” Daniel punctuated the end of his argument with an enormous bite of barbecue pork.
“Not with that attitude you’re not.”
Daniel snort-laughed and almost choked, which made Drew cackle, which only made Daniel laugh harder.
It took a full minute for both of them to catch their breath.
Daniel thought he’d at least successfully, if accidentally, ended the conversation, but Drew was persistent when she really wanted something.
“Fine. Don’t come out tonight. But don’t tell me you’re worried about a hangover. We both know you’ll drink two beers and be home by 11:30.”
“I don’t have time to get into something new right now anyway. You know how summer gets.”
“The only thing I’m suggesting you get into is someone’s pants. Join the dark side, my dear committed serial monogamist.”
* * *
By the time Maggie dragged herself back up the hill to Aunt Peg’s cottage, the sun was setting. The air hadn’t yet cooled much from its midday peak, but the breeze chilled the layer of sweat on her skin enough that she wished she had a jacket. Her body felt every day of no longer being in her twenties, and when she’d made it onto the porch, she sank onto the swing, vaguely entertaining the idea of taking a shower.
The day had been a blur of names, faces, dustpans, and spray cleaners, as an army of Emilys and Hannahs had fanned out across the camp like Santa’s Elves in the off season. Overall, it had gone about as well as she could have hoped, even if it had involved more jump scares from startled mice than she had mentally prepared for. Her staff seemed solid. Aunt Peg had been a people person, and so far, it seemed like she’d found some good people. People who had all made it through a full day with Maggie as the interim director of a partly-open summer camp with no reported casualties.
Still, Maggie felt unsettled. She was out of her element, and she hated that. She liked to know she could do her job well and, frankly, that she could do the jobs of everyone around her better than they could if need be.
Here, she barely even knew what her job was.